


Tangible Pain

by CrayonClown



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, F/M, Friendship/Love, Guilt, Love Confessions, One Shot, Pain, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrayonClown/pseuds/CrayonClown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very angsty. Very dark. Starts off B&H, and Brennan can't take it. Rather that deal with the irrationally painful feelings, she turns her pain into something real, something physical, something tangible. She turns it into something she can understand. She self harms herself to create a physical pain. A pain that she can see why it hurts, unlike the hurt of her feelings. When Angela discovers the truth she seeks the help of Booth, only to find out he knew something had changed in her, but didn't do anything. Will guilt be enough for Booth to finally be able to get Brennan the help she needs?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangible Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Assumes knowledge of season six up until episode 7 "The Babe in the Bar". No spoilers beyond that.
> 
> This is very different from anything else I have written. It is very angsty, and definitely a little dark. Dark Brennan, and guilty Booth. It also involves a sensitive subject for some people. A little OOC.
> 
> Hannah is involved, but there is a B/B resolution.
> 
> I am not a psychologist, so don't pick me apart for any inaccuracies.
> 
> This one now has a companion piece of sorts called "She Isn't Enough". While the story line isn't the same or even related, each story reveals the emotional turmoil inside each character.
> 
> "Tangible Pain" Summary: How is Brennan handling Booth blowing her off for Hannah? When Angela discovers the truth she seeks the help of Booth, only to find out he knew and didn't do anything. Will guilt be enough for Booth to be finally able to get Brennan the help she needs? One-shot 
> 
> "She Isn't Enough" Summary: We get a look into Booth's thoughts as he is sitting there gambling as he deals with the emotional struggle thinking about his relationship with Hannah, and where he went wrong with Bones. Can Bones save him from himself? This started out as short piece that exploded into something else. Still a WIP.

Angela had just handed a sketch of their latest victim to her best friend. As the anthropologist extended her arm, her sleeve rose up slightly revealing some marks that didn't initially register in Angela's mind. After a few minutes more or discussing the victim, she saw them again; it sank in and was now bothering the artist. Did she really see what she thought she saw? Certainly not! Temperance Brennan wouldn't do such a thing; would she?

Brennan was mid-sentence when Angela's hand jutted out and grabbed Brennan's arms shoving her sleeves up. Her eyes widened at what she saw. Brennan was startled at her friend's action, and knew she should have been more careful around the very observant elite group of coworkers at the lab. She was stunned when Angela didn't say anything at all to her, and just ran to her office slamming the door shut.

Brennan quickly covered her wrists. The last thing she needed was for everyone to know just how weak willed she was. Her problems were her own, and she needn't bother anyone else with her problems. Why burden anyone else's life?

The second Angela's door closed she had her phone out and had called Booth. She didn't explain anything to him, but told him that he needed to meet her in her office as soon as he could. She also told him to avoid Brennan when he came in the lab. The last thing she needed to do was spook Brennan by alerting her to the fact that she had called in reinforcements.

When Booth arrived, he snuck into Angela's office, and daggers were immediately glared into his soul.

"Do you have  _any_  idea what Brennan has been doing to herself?"

"No, what?"

"You haven't noticed anything, like say, I don't know, several inch to two inch long cuts on both of Brennan's forearms?"

Booth sighed. Yeah, he'd noticed. At first he thought he was just seeing things. How was he going to explain that he'd noticed and then just hadn't said anything? So, he chose not to say anything and just nodded as his eyes closed in guilt.

"WHAT? You saw them, and didn't say anything? Booth, what happened to you? The pre-Hannah Booth would have done something about this! I can't believe you. What? Have you been too busy fucking your girlfriend silly and making innuendos about figs to notice or care that your best friend is in dire need of your help? You are a jerk, Booth. Get out of my office!" She yelled at him. When he didn't make a move to get off her couch, she grabbed his arm, yanking him to his feet, and dragged him to the door before shoving him out.

As he made his ungraceful exit out of Angela's office and the door slammed behind him, he'd noticed that Brennan was now on the forensic platform examining the remains that had been brought in last night. She didn't look up when he swiped his card. He even leaned on the exam table with his hands, and she made no move to reprimand him for possibly contaminating evidence. Booth sighed loudly, and made a bunch of other annoying noises to indicate boredom, which Brennan would normally tell him annoyed her and that he should just go lay in her office on her couch. She did nothing. She made no response to him being there, whatsoever.

Finally, he'd had enough! "Bones, why are you cutting yourself? You're not some weird Emo kid. This isn't you, Bones."

Without a word, she snapped her gloves off and ran down the steps of the platform and into her office where she'd taken off her lab coat and grabbed her purse. She left. She left, and didn't return the next day, or the day after, or the week after.

The only reason he knew she was okay was because Cam told him that she had taken off to work at home on her book. She'd done a personnel search and reported to Booth that her Jeffersonian email address had been accessed recently, and there was no reason to believe that anything had happened to her. Booth didn't tell her about the cuts. He wasn't sure that was something that she'd want to get out. As it was, Angela knew, and he wasn't sure if Angela had gone to Cam with the information or not. He had not spoken to Angela in the few weeks since she'd thrown him out of her office.

He was sick of not knowing. This had been eating him alive, but honestly what could he do? Brennan wouldn't answer his calls. She wouldn't open her door for him, not even when he'd brought Thai. She wouldn't even speak to him through the door. One day he had gotten the brilliant idea to call her number from a payphone so that the caller ID wouldn't give him away. It worked; she answered. He never said anything to let her know it was him, but just knowing that she was okay enough to answer the phone was good enough for him. He kept that up for a few days before she finally asked if it was Booth calling her. He told her that it was him, and that he wanted to talk to her, but she'd hung up the second she knew for certain it was him. Now, she no longer answered those calls either.

After a month of not being able to associate with his partner, he'd had enough. He was going to go over there. He was going to let himself into her apartment with the key she'd given him a long time ago, and he was going to have a talk with her, even if it meant tying her to a chair to do it. He only hoped that she didn't kick his ass and take his gun to shoot him before he got the chance to say anything.

He turned the key in the lock and heard a click. He threw the door open. She wasn't anywhere to be seen. He saw nothing. She wasn't in there. Not in the living room, not in the dining room. He checked her guest bathroom and spare bedroom, just in case. Then he moved quietly down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was mostly shut, but was cracked open just a touch. He peeked in the crack to see her sitting at her vanity.

What he saw shook him to the core. Worse than any crime scene they had ever been to. Bloody gauze littered the floor of her chic bedroom. There were bottles of iodine and hydrogen peroxide on the vanity. There she sat. God, had she even eaten  _anything_ this month? She sat with her left arm, rested wrist up, on the surface of the vanity as she brought the razor blade slowly to her skin.

She hadn't heard him come in, or if she did, she made no move to acknowledge him whatsoever.

"BONES!" He yelled as he bounded in the room to prevent her from harming herself.

Wrong move. His voice caused her to jump and the blade slipped a little deeper than she'd intended to go. She let out a hiss and winced as she dropped the blade on the vanity. Blood was now dripping down her arm and she sat frozen in almost a state of shock. Booth rushed the rest of the way over to her and applied pressure to the new cut, and a few of the less severe cuts that she had also made on her thigh.

Against her protest, he picked her up and carried her down to the SUV. He shoved her into the passenger seat without saying a word. He drove her to Washington General. On the way he called it in. Legally, he had no choice, even though it crushed his heart.

"Dispatch, this is 22705, over."

" _Dispatch, over_."

"Please alert Washington Gen that I am bringing in a woman with self-inflicted wounds to the forearms and upper thighs. Name, Temperance Brennan, age 35; there is a fair amount of blood loss, and she has lost consciousness. Over."

"Roger, 22705; Wilco, out."

He got her to the ambulance bay where a couple of doctors and nurses were ready to take her. They asked him if he was family, and he almost said yes, but really what kind of family had he been to her lately? They did not allow him to go back with her. He was forced to sit out in the waiting room full of sick people, and squealing misbehaved children while he waited on news of his best friend.

While out there, he called Angela who rejected his call at least six times before he finally just called Hodgins. He talked to him and let him know that Bones was in the hospital. He didn't tell Hodgins why, but Booth told him to tell Angela, and said she would know why. He figured if anyone had any right to tell Brennan's personal business, it wasn't him. So he figured he'd give Angela that honor. He told Hodgins to get a hold of Cam while he called Max, Russ, and Sweets.

Shit, Sweets. Man, if there ever was a time for the kid to grow up and play doctor, now was it. Brennan would fight it, and hate it, but she had to have suffered from some kind of psychosis to have developed this unhealthy lifestyle and self-mutilating behavior.

When Sweets and everyone else arrived, Booth had just heard from the doctors that Brennan would be brought to her own room after a short recovery period. She had been taken into surgery to repair a few blood vessels and one of the superficial flexor tendons. It had taken thirty-two stitches to close up, and they had also treated the more superficial wounds by covering them with bandages.

Once she regained consciousness, Sweets went into her room for an evaluation. She didn't talk to him at all, so the only thing he had to base his psych evaluation on was her behavior as reported by her friends and the very disturbing physical signs of her condition. She was severely malnourished, and then there were the other obvious physical signs such as the deliberate self harm that indicated at least a mild to moderate psychological crisis. He diagnosed her with depression and started her on Pristiq. He didn't push her to talk because he knew he had to keep himself on her side so that she would be willing to talk to him later on, especially if she wanted to continue her partnership with the FBI after this is all said and done.

Sweets came out of the room looking truly shaken up. Brennan was very much someone he looked up to, regardless of her views on his profession. To think that the iron willed woman, who everyone on the team admired, would do such a thing to herself made him question everything he thought he knew about her, and why hadn't he seen it?

The others were each given a few minutes at a time with her, during which she said nothing and looked at no one. Booth let everyone go ahead of him; he figured he would just stay the night here with her. He'd asked Angela to call Hannah to make sure she knew where he was and to tell her to not wait up.

Sweets had talked with a few of her doctors about her injuries and her malnourishment. He had agreed that it would be a good idea for her to be placed under constant supervision and to remove anything that she could use against herself from the room. In fact, when Booth entered her room, he was not allowed to carry his firearm. Essentially, she was placed under a suicide watch.

After stowing his firearm in the lockbox under his seat in the SUV, he ran back up to her room. Before he entered he was stopped by Sweets and Dr. Ward. They had done some digging to see if any of them had power of attorney or were listed as her medical proxy in the event that she was declared mentally incompetent or unfit to make her own informed decisions. As it turned out, Booth was listed as someone who could make decisions in the event that she could not.

They discussed the possibility of getting her in-patient treatment at a local facility, where Sweets would stay on as her psychologist or consult with anyone else they wanted to work with. After much discussion, they decided that it would just be better to see if Booth could talk to her first, considering no one had been able to get anything from her since she woke up. He really wanted to find out why she had done what she did. He had been such a crappy friend; it was eating away at his soul, and the fact that he was the one that startled her and caused her to cut herself deeply didn't sit well with him either.

Brennan was laying there awake just staring at the wall, as she had been with everyone else. Booth walked in the room, and didn't say anything for over an hour. Just being in the same room with her, as she sat there alive and getting help had provided him some relief, but he wouldn't truly be able to live with himself until he asked her.

When he finally spoke, all he asked was, "Why?"

She finally looked into his eyes and saw the amount of fear in his eyes.

"Because it hurts, Booth." She choked out as she started to break down.

"Yeah, it hurts. You cut yourself, Bones!"

"No, not the cuts. Well, yes those hurt, too, but I'm not talking about the cuts."

"Then please tell me, because I cannot understand why you are doing this to yourself. The Bones I know doesn't do stuff like _this_!"

"The Bones you  _knew_  doesn't do stuff like this. Booth, you don't know me anymore. You hardly see me anymore. You spend all of your time with Hannah. How could you possibly know me?"

"Bones, she's my girlfriend. You are not. You had your chance! You're just my partner; you didn't want to be something more. Partners don't spend all of their time together. What we did before, it wasn't normal  _just partners_  behavior!" Booth said, insensitively. It was completely the wrong thing to say, but it was the catalyst that motivated Brennan to say what she needed to say.

"Do you really want to know what my problem is?" She asked with a venom laced tone.

"Yes!"

"Fine. It hurts. Seeing you with  _her_  hurts. I was  _finally_  ready to move our relationship to the next level when we got back, and then  _she_  showed up. I am fairly certain that I have dropped hints that I am still interested in you in hopes that you will come to your senses…"

"Bones…"

"No, I'm NOT done. Shut up, and listen to me, Seeley Booth. I was finally ready to admit that  _I love you_! It hurts that you moved on. I know you said you  _had_  to, but I never thought that you would go off to war and then find a  _bed-buddy_  while you were there. Not only that, I cannot believe after all of your  _bullshit_  talk about  _knowing_  I was the one and your thirty, forty, and fifty years,  _after all of that talk_  you moved on so quickly. Why didn't you fight harder for  _me_? For  _us_? I don't understand. Was I not worth it? I don't understand how you could have even stated something so  _profound_  and then almost in the same breath say you have to move on."

"I don't know what to say, Bones."

"Well, how about you just sit there and not say anything. I'll be able to cope better if you don't say something you don't  _really_ mean, and then take it back almost immediately."

"Can I ask you something?"

"I guess, though I reserve the right to  _not_  answer you."

"Fair enough. Why did you tell me this? What does  _any_  of this have to do with why you cut yourself?"

"Because, Booth,  _emotions_  such as sadness, jealousy, anger, and feigning happiness, they aren't  _tangible_  pains. You cannot _really_  see what causes them. The cutting provided a more physical and grounded pain. It distracted me from the pain that I didn't understand. It is something that I used to do when things got to tough to handle as a teenager. It allowed me to focus on the real pain, the pain that I knew the cause of, and I don't know, okay? It's very  _irrational_ , and I know that, but it  _helped_. It _helped_  late at night when I went home too late because you weren't there to send me home at a decent hour. It  _helped_  when you didn't show up late at night with take-out. It  _helped_  when you didn't stick around for drinks after cases. It  _helped_  after I saved your girlfriend from incompetent radiologists. It  _helped_  every morning we didn't have coffee together. It  _helped_ when my best friend blew off Angela's big announcement party to go have sex. It  _helped_ …"

She was cut off when his lips crashed onto hers. She resisted at first, but this time he was persistent, unlike the kiss on the steps of the Hoover. Finally after a few minutes, she broke the kiss off like she felt she should have tried harder to do when his lips first landed on hers.

"Booth,  _no_! You have a  _girlfriend_. You are  _not_  a cheater!"

"Bones, the way I see it is that I  _have been_  cheating. I have been cheating on  _you_. Hannah just helped me through some tough times in Afghanistan. I love her, I do, but I am not  _in love_  with her. I think she knows that, too. I think we both knew that this thing we have is only temporary."

"Booth, a woman who flies across the world to be with someone and to move in with him does not only think it is temporary."

"Maybe not, but she said herself that she is a nomad. If she really thought this was permanent, she would have unpacked her bags. She's been here three months, and she is still living out of her duffel bag even though I cleared space in drawers and my closet for her things. I…I just have to talk to her, alright. I'll talk to her, and we will fix  _this_. We will fix  _us_ , okay, Bones?"

She nodded, and then looked behind Booth to see Hannah standing in the doorway. "I hope you don't mind me stopping by. I just wanted to come make sure you're alright. Seeley, Angela called me so that I knew not to expect you for dinner. I just…I'm sorry to interrupt what sounded like a…very serious conversation. I can come back later; do you need anything?"

Booth could tell by the tone of her voice as she continued talking that she had heard a great deal of the conversation. He didn't know how much, but he knew she did.

"No, Hannah. It's fine, come in. We need to talk. All of us."

Hannah walked further into the room. She pulled the chair up in front of Booth where he sat next to Brennan on her hospital bed.

Booth took a hand from both women in each of his hands before he started talking. "First off, I would like to apologize to the both of you. I have been completely unfair to both of you. I've been such a jerk. Hannah," he said before bringing her hand to his mouth to place a soft kiss to the top of her knuckles, "before I left for Afghanistan, I asked Bones to take a chance on us and she turned me down. I told her I had to move on, and I didn't fight her because I didn't want to push her away further. Then, I come back to the states and blindside her with the fact that I tried to move on without her. She just told me that she was ready to start a relationship with me before she found out about you. I'm sorry to have put you in that position. I didn't mean for you to be the rebound girl, but that's exactly what happened. And Bones," he did the same for her and brought her knuckles up to his lips for a soft kiss, "It was so wrong of me to not fight harder for someone who is easily one of the most important people in my life. I'm sorry that it seems that I have ignored you since being back. It was not my intention to blow you off and cast you aside. Hannah, I'm sorry, but…"

"I know, Seeley. I heard you before. We were temporary. I do know that. I asked you awhile ago if there was something between you two. The look in your eyes gave it away, and just in case I misread that situation, the fact that you weren't around for my surgery told me where I stood. Look, I cannot say that this doesn't hurt and we had fun while it lasted, but I can say that I understand. Truly, I do. You love me, but you're not in love with me." She gave a sad smile as she repeated his words.

"Just how long were you standing there and how much did you hear before?" Booth asked Hannah, as he used the hand that was holding hers to wipe the tears from her eyes.

"Long enough; it really doesn't matter. What matters to me is that you're happy. I never really had your heart, Seeley. That always belonged to Temperance. She makes you happy. I'm going to go now, and leave you two alone. I will have my stuff out of…"

"No. Stay as long as you need; there is no rush to get you out of my hair. I am a jerk, but I'm not a bastard. I will most likely be here with Bones anyway. Just take your time."

"I think my old job is still open. I will see if I can get that back, and if I can, then I will leave as soon as possible to go back to Afghanistan. I will be back in the morning to see if either of you need anything." She stood and placed a quick goodbye kiss on Booth's cheek before turning to leave.

"Wait, Hannah?"

"Yes, Temperance?"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Just take care of him, okay."

Brennan smiled and nodded at the woman as she turned and walked out.

They still had a lot to talk about, and a lot to work through during Brennan's recovery. It was going to take a little bit of time before they worked through things together, but for the first time in over a year, it felt like something was finally going right for the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> As I reread and posted this here on AO3, I realize that there is much more I could have and should have done with this one. I may pick it up again and continue it eventually. I'd really like to explore the fallout of Brennan's actions and the development of something more between B&B as I did in the companion piece, "She Isn't Enough".


End file.
